Authors: Gretchen Archer
“She’s not feeling well,” I said. “She won’t be joining us.”
“Sorry to hear that.” He didn’t sound sorry.
The waiter scooted the chair beneath me and poured me a glass of sparkling water.
“Are you hungry?” Matthew Thatcher asked.
“Starving to death.” I grabbed a
salade
fork and dug in.
“Delicious, right?” he asked. “I eat here at least two or three times a week. Try the saumon fumé.” He pointed with his knife. “Try everything.”
I tried everything that wasn’t brown or pink.
“When did you go blonde?” he asked. “Do you know who you look like?”
I forgot about my hair! I fell face first into a plate full of French food.
NINETEEN
“Welcome back.”
Fantasy was sitting in a hospital chair.
I was lying in a hospital bed.
“What happened?” I bolted upright. “Why are we here?” I inventoried my limbs. I patted about my head. “Did Bianca make me come here?” I pulled the blue gown away from my chest, stuck my head in, and thank goodness, didn’t find DDD boobs.
Fantasy stood, then closed the space between us. “Honey,” she took my hand in hers, “you’ve been sick.”
“I don’t feel sick.”
“You’ve been very sick.”
“If I’m that sick, where are my parents? Where’s Bradley?”
“Davis.” Fantasy peeled our hands apart. “You were poisoned.”
“
What
?” I didn’t feel poisoned; I felt confused. And thirsty. “
Poisoned
? Antifreeze? Snake venom? Cyanide?”
“Banana pudding.”
Poisoned banana pudding? I pushed her out of my way and tried to climb out of the bed, but the room started spinning, so I rocked back. Flashes of dinner—white linens, forks, red wine—were coming back to me. “I’m not the only one who had the banana pudding! Are we all in the hospital?” I tried to remember who all I’d seen the oval dish of golden meringue peaks in front of. I was having trouble remembering who all I’d had dinner with. “Where’s Bradley?”
She passed me two things: the results of my blood work and the front page of
The Biloxi Sun Herald
. The headline read: “Bellissimo’s Violettes to Reopen After Fatality.”
She helped me up, she dressed me, she drove me home.
“Davis. Say something.” We were at a red light. I could see the Regent a block away. “You’re scaring me.”
“What day is it?”
“It’s Tuesday, honey.”
“So I’ve been in the hospital since Friday night?”
She nodded, then took a left. I dug through the Patient Property bag for my parking-garage fob. I’m not sure how we got from the garage to the condo, but No Hair was waiting inside. I wondered how and why so many people had access to the condo. I watched the look that passed between them. Hers was
handle with care
; his was
gotcha
.
I took a hot shower, pulled my wet hair back, dressed in my favorite sweats, and joined them. Fantasy poured me a cup of hot coffee.
“What happened?” I asked No Hair.
“Have you ever heard of cassava?”
“No.”
“It’s a South American root imported for desserts, mostly tapioca. The banana pudding you were served was made with cassava, which won’t hurt you if it’s cooked properly. It’s toxic when it’s not.”
Boy, I’ll say.
“Do you remember any of this?” No Hair asked.
“It’s coming back to me in bits and pieces.” And bananas. “Was it an accident,” I asked, “or intentional?”
“That,” No Hair said, “is what we don’t know. And if it was intentional, who was the target?”
I honestly didn’t know. “Have funeral arrangements been made?”
“The funeral is on Thursday, Davis. We’re doing everything we can to get to the bottom of this,” No Hair said, “but for now, you need to lay low. Rest up.”
“You’ve been through a major trauma, Davis.” Fantasy patted me: head, shoulders, knees and toes. Pat, pat, pat.
I looked from one to the other. These two never handled me with kid gloves. Neither held back. Today they looked like if they exhaled too hard, I’d crumble. If they moved to fast, I’d crack in two. “Did I almost die?”
“No, Davis.” No Hair’s tie was stark white with a small eyeball in the middle, against a stark white shirt. “You didn’t almost die.”
“Four days of my life are gone, No Hair. What’s your definition of almost dying?”
“You were in a medically-induced coma, Davis, which they say
saved
your life.”
I did feel rested.
“You slept through the bad stuff, honey.” Pat, pat, pat.
No Hair rose to leave. “I’m going to run--”
I waited.
“Maybe,” he suggested, “you should talk to someone, Davis. You know, a shrink-type someone.”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
“Sorry about all this, Davis.”
Fantasy walked No Hair to the elevator. Where they whispered.
* * *
She steered me to the marshmallow sofa and tucked me under a blanket. My discharge paperwork and blood work results from Biloxi Memorial were on the table in front of me.
Much later, she asked, “How do you feel?”
“Empty.”
She pressed her lips together. Pat, pat, pat.
“Were you with me at the hospital?
“Only the first few hours,” she said. “Then they locked you up and wouldn’t let anyone but family in, and that was every few hours for a few minutes at a time.”
“Was my family there?”
“When I got there today, a nurse told me your mother had been there the whole time and didn’t leave until this morning.”
“She must have my mother mixed up with someone else’s mother.”
“No, Davis. She said your mother took it pretty hard.”
It struck me as odd that I’d finally done something to drag a little compassion out of my mother.
“She told No Hair she would never make another banana pudding.”
That sounded more like my mother. Blame the banana pudding. “So No Hair was there?”
“No, honey. I think he checked in on you.”
I waited for Fantasy to tell me who else was there, who else took it pretty hard, who else checked in, but she didn’t. Because, I suppose, no one else was there, no one else took it pretty hard, and no one else checked in.
Silent healing time passed. A lot of it.
She made me Frosted Cherry Pop Tarts. They tasted like Frosted Cherry Cardboard. A quick squall blew in from the Gulf and we watched it cross the sky.
Eventually, she began gathering her things. “I have some news. Good news, for a change.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“No Hair hired Baylor for us.”
“Really?” I asked. “Why?”
She shrugged. “He’s cute.”
“He is cute.”
“Muscle, maybe?”
“We have plenty of muscles.”
She agreed. “I guess No Hair hired him, Davis, because he needed help. You were—” she didn’t say it, “—and I had to spend a little time at home,” she said. “It was get my butt home, or get a divorce lawyer.”
“I can’t talk about Bradley right now.”
“I didn’t say anything about him, honey.”
“You said ‘lawyer’.”
“Come here.” I fell into her big hug and stayed there. When I woke up again, I was all tucked in on the sofa, the sky was dark, and Fantasy was gone.
* * *
The ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliates moved their reporters, microphones, and mobile satellites from the entrance of the Bellissimo, where they’d been camped out for days, to the entrance of the Grand Palace Casino. They joined CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and E!, who were already there.
I watched with a bottle of wine, my first adult beverage in two months, so the images on the television were a little blurry, and I intended for them to get a lot blurrier.
“In a stunning turn of events,” Lila Medina, WXXV Gulfport, wearing a hot hot pink tight tight sweater, reported, “a federal judge has dismissed without prejudice the class-action suit against the Grand Palace Casino for allegedly failing to protect its employees from secondhand smoke.”
“What does that mean, exactly, Lila?” Sheldon Ortiz spoke from behind an anchor desk.
“Well, Sheldon,” on-location Lila said, “it means that the almost two hundred plaintiffs in this case can bring the same charges against the Grand, but at a later date. The court’s ruling means the rights of the plaintiffs aren’t waived or terminated, rather, they’re postponed. But for now, Sheldon, the show is over.” Lila was panting.
“Does this have anything to do with the ruling against Bonita Jakes, whose complaint against the Grand was dismissed?” He struck a different, more ominous, pose. “Or is this about the blow the Grand’s legal team has been dealt?”
“Grand Palace attorney Kirk Olsen spoke briefly at a press conference earlier today.” The screen was split between Sheldon and Lila. “Here’s what he had to say.”
Kirk, who’d been sitting beside Bradley Cole in Grafton Clemmer’s courtroom last week, was now in my living room. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, and had four microphones in his face. Someone holding one of the microphones asked, “Is it true that your parent company in Las Vegas is going to offer a settlement to the victims?”
“They’re not victims,” Kirk snapped, “they’re petitioners. And no comment.”
A different microphone asked, “Do you think, Kirk, that the judge postponed this trial because your legal team has fallen apart?”
Kirk was offended. “Absolutely not.”
Lila Medina didn’t believe a word of it. Neither did Sheldon Ortiz. Neither did I.
TWENTY
On Wednesday, the day before the funeral, I woke early, packed an overnight bag, and drove home to Pine Apple. In an effort to start living my life in a completely different way, one that might yield different results, I drove straight to the home I’d grown up in, which is to say I went to see my mother first, instead of driving directly to the police station, my usual route, to see my father first.
“Child.” Mother held the door open. She took my bag. She asked if I needed a sweater. She fixed me hot chocolate. Any minute, I looked for her to break out the Crayons and coloring books. When she finally stopped fussing over me, she sat beside me at the kitchen table that had seen a thousand bowls of tomato soup, two thousand grilled cheeses, and three thousand hours of homework. “Why didn’t you tell us you were pregnant?”
“Mother.” I slumped in the chair. “I didn’t even tell myself.”
“So your young man never knew?”
I ran my thumbnail down a long groove in the wooden table.
“Well, honey,” my mother said. “These things happen for a reason.” She went on to tell me God had plans, rainbows come after storms, lights are at the end of tunnels, and never run with scissors.
She asked me if I wanted to talk about my time in the hospital.
I did not.
I thanked her for being there.
I asked her if she’d told Daddy and Meredith.
Yes. She had.
Mother folded and refolded a kitchen towel. “I failed you girls by not talking to you more.”
None of us would forget the day the seventh grade P.E. teacher explained womanhood to Meredith, convinced her she wasn’t dying, then called Daddy to come get her because no one answered at home.
“This isn’t your fault, Mother.”
She matched the edges of the kitchen towel and folded it to postage-stamp size.
“Do you ever think of moving back to Pine Apple, Davis? Maybe Biloxi is just too big.” Mother’s hands looked so old. “You should talk to your father. He says he’s ready to retire, and what he means is he’s waiting on you.” Mother’s neck was…falling. “You and Meredith could have fun like you used to when you were girls.”
“What?” Meredith banged through the kitchen door. “Are you two talking about me behind my back?” She hugged me from behind and kissed the top of my head. “Heard you rolled into town.” She scraped up a chair. “How’s tricks?”
I couldn’t help it; the muscles in the bottom half of my face moved. My sister.
“So that Mr. Microphone guy is dead, huh?” Bells on every word.
My mother, in honor of her hero Ronald Reagan, kept a jar of jellybeans on the kitchen table between the napkin holder and the salt and pepper shakers. Meredith reached for it, then began digging out the red ones.
“Stop picking through the jellybeans, young lady.”
She waved mother off. “Deader than a doornail?”
“He’s all the way dead,” I said. “He’s a goner.”
“Daddy says his last act on Earth was dinner with you.”
Meredith collapsed on the table, playing dead. Jellybeans flew through the air, Mother let out a yelp, and I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Which made Meredith laugh. It got so funny, even Mother was laughing. “You girls stop it!” She dabbed her eyes with a paper napkin. “Lightning will strike you!”
It was good to be home.
* * *
So Help Me God, I needed out of Pine Apple. Two hours, and I was about to lose my mind. There was no way in hell I was spending the night.
We were at Mel’s Diner around a rectangular table that seated six: me, Daddy, Mother, Eddie the Dog, Mel (my ex-ex-father-in-law and proprietor of this health hazard of an establishment), and Wilcox County’s Prodigal Son, Cyril Bunker, home at last. The man was three hundred years old. He might be, stretched out, four feet tall. He wore Mr. Magoo glasses, his clothes swallowed him, and white fluffy hair sprouted from all sorts of places about his head it shouldn’t have.
“Oh, she’ll love the place.” Cyril spoke at the speed and volume of growing grass. “They put on the dog when you get there.” His poor fingers were just mangled. He brought his coffee cup to his mouth in such a corkscrew way that my mother’s hands kept shooting out to assist.
Bea Crawford, a.k.a. Leona Powell, checked into the So Help Me God Senior Living Orientation Center on Sunday morning while I snoozed away in Biloxi Memorial’s Critical Care Unit, and no one had heard a peep from her since. No Hair sent her in with a satellite cell-phone-in-a-picture-frame (very James Bond) and instructions to check in at least twice a day, but she had yet to make contact. Bea’s loved ones were slowly getting curious. Concerned would be way down the road.
“They roll out the red carpet for the first weeks.” Cyril stretched every word to the breaking point. I noticed we were all dipping and swaying with each elongated syllable, freezing in anticipation between words, and wondering if we ought to check him for a pulse when he finally finished a sentence. “In a few days,” (“
ddddaaaaaayyyyyyyssssss
”) “she’ll get transferred to the therapy building,” he said, “then she’ll be ringing that picture off the wall wanting someone to break her out.” (“
Ooooooooouuuuuuuuttttttt
.”) It took Cyril a full twelve minutes to impart the thought.
“Tell us the whole story, Cyril,” my father prompted.
“Oh, hell.” Eddie Crawford lit a Marlboro. “Ma will be dead before he finishes the story.”
“Shut up, Eddie.” (Me.)
“Hey!” He stabbed the air with his lit cigarette. My mother squealed. “Don’t blame me because you got dumped.”
Just then, the door burst open and the long, distorted shadow of my Granny Dee fell across the length of the table. My sister scooted past her and found a barstool. “Geesh, Louise,” Meredith said. “She made me bring her.”
Granny Dee shuffled to the table. “Cyril Bunker, you handsome devil. Welcome home.”
He looked at Granny through his Coke-bottle glasses. A wide grin spread across his face, then the whole row of his top teeth fell into his lap.
* * *
We moved the party to the police station, and we didn’t invite Meredith, Eddie, Mel, Mother, or Granny Dee. Meredith was happy to be released, Eddie crawled back under his rock, Mel dove into a vat of Bombay gin, Mother said she’d bring us lunch, and Granny Dee insisted on coming with us. “I’m not letting him out of my sight,” she whispered to me. Everyone in the room heard it except for Cyril Bunker.
My desk, the desk I walked away from more than two years ago when my father fired me, had not been touched. I stood beside it, knowing that if I pulled out the chair and sat down, I might never get up. I’d grown up in this room. My father, who was studying the floor as I studied my life, was growing old in this room.
“I love you, Daddy.”
Daddy’s eyes were shiny.
“Is this where you prepare prisoner meals, Samuel?” Granny Dee was helping Cyril walk, which was hilarious, because Daddy needed to be helping her walk, and I needed to be helping Daddy walk.
Oh, the circle of life.
We were squeezed into the kitchenette, because that’s where the electronics were.
“Good grief.” The dusty computer’s software hadn’t been updated in forever and I had to turn the keyboard upside down to bang out the cracker crumbs and a rubber band. “Don’t you even play solitaire, Daddy?”
“Candy Crush!” My grandmother shouted.
Eventually, I weaseled my way into the Bellissimo’s system and began pulling up images and transferring to a power-point slide show. We had to move Cyril to an office chair, roll him over, pump him up in the air, and get his nose on the monitor before he could see anything. In the middle of all that, he asked my father how long it would take to get his driver’s license renewed, because it’s not like he had all the time left in the world.
“I’ll look into it, Cyril.”
“Now, Mr. Bunker.” I sat beside him. “Have you ever seen this man?”
“No.”
“You don’t want to see him now, Cyril,” my grandmother said. “He’s laid out on a slab at the morgue.”
“Granny!”
She shrugged.
“Are you sure, Mr. Bunker?” There were thousands of images of Matthew Thatcher in the Bellissimo system to choose from, and I gave Cyril more than a hundred chances to recognize him.
“Nope.” “No.” “Don’t know him from Adam.” “Still don’t know him.” “Sorry.” “Is he a singer?” “Never seen him.” “Now, him I know.”
I woke up. “What?”
“Go back one.”
I went back one. It was Matthew Thatcher back in his LeeRoy Maffini days. Without the nose job, with auburn hair.
“He’s a preacher.”
“He’s a dead preacher,” my grandmother said.
Mother spread out a bright yellow tablecloth that smelled like summer and insisted we all wash our hands. She put out a platter of chicken salad and pimento cheese sandwiches, a dish of miniature sweet pickles, and a plate of toffee cookies. She had vanilla Ensure for Granny Dee and Cyril, a thermos of coffee for Daddy, and a cold Dr. Pepper in a bottle for me, a drink I loved as a child, a drink she had to drive to Sissy’s Shell Station on Turkey Holloman Road to buy, and a drink I hadn’t touched since college.
My father said, “You’d better enjoy this while it lasts.”
“I’m going to milk it for everything it’s worth, Daddy.”
“That’s my girl.”
Cyril Bunker ate slower than he talked. “It’s these
teeth
,” he said. “Like trying to eat with rocks in your mouth.”
My grandmother suggested he lose them, because we were practically family. She wallowed all over the word
family
.
Between bites, Cyril managed to identify McKinley Weeks, the church emissary who’d attached himself to Bea at the old people’s slot tournament last week (“Another preacher,” Cyril said) and Jewell Maffini, who’d started all this mess, because she’d been my mark a lifetime ago (two and a half weeks ago) when No Hair made me go to the Mystery Shopper tournament instead of moving. If I’d never seen this woman’s picture, maybe Bradley Cole and I would still be together.
“How do you know her, Cyril?”
“Well. I found a cookie jar. It was in the year of our Lord nineteen aught nine.”
Oh, dear Lord.
“No,” (“
nnnnnoooooooooooooo
”) “it was nineteen and eighty-nine.”
Dodged that eighty-year bullet.
My mother called about supper before the poor old guy finished.
Cyril, in his early sixties, on his way to his lawyer’s office in Montgomery to sign the last of the paperwork selling the Tilda Reyes quilted luggage line to a soft-goods manufacturer in LaGrange, Georgia, stumbled out to his old dog shed and into an overlooked cookie jar full of hundred dollar bills. Early for his meeting, the cash burning a hole in his pocket, he made a pit stop at Jupiter’s Gold Casino, just outside of Montgomery, where he met Jewell Maffini. He never made it to the meeting with his lawyer. The next day, he came to know Jewell in a carnal way—my grandmother angrily scooted her chair away from him with that, but she must have forgiven him, or forgotten, because after she woke up from her catnap (head tipped back, mouth wide open, snoring), taken during the grisly drawn-out details of Cyril’s carnal education of Jewell, Granny scooted back in—and it was on the afternoon following all the carnal business, at a Double Diamond Dare slot machine, when Jewell convinced Cyril it was wrong to sell the Tilda Reyes line to foreigners. Cyril didn’t think Georgia was a foreign country, to which Jewell brought up all that is right and holy in Alabama. Football. Dogs versus Tide. He couldn’t argue with
that
. Cyril made the mistake of telling her, football notwithstanding, that if he didn’t sell the line, he couldn’t keep his property up, the taxes alone were killing him—and here he launched into a forty-minute diatribe about Amy Carter, only child of Rosalyn and Jimmy Carter—and the next thing the poor old guy knew, he was locked up in Beehive, Alabama, in therapy from twelve to fourteen hours a day.
I really needed to know about the therapy, but I really wanted to get back to Biloxi, and Granny Dee and Cyril really, really needed their meds.
My father walked me to my car. He told me he believed, with everything he had, that one day soon, when the time was right, I’d bring him a baby to bounce on his knee and call him Papa.